Winter sunshine and a crispy morning with blue skies provided perfect conditions to visit The Saville Garden. I’ve visited this garden on a few occasions as it is very accessible from London. The winter garden has been more recently developed since I last visited in the winter. If you are a member of the […]

Most of us don’t venture out into the garden at night. Its too dark, too cold and not much to see. Taking a tour around a large botanical garden, lit with over 60,000 lights of all colours, shapes and sizes is a completely different experience and well worth the effort to venture out on […]

Day 22 Life Cycle of a Poppy – a Study This time of year it’s definitely poppy time in the garden. Once you have the Californian poppy in your garden you will always have it as it self seeds beautifully. I spent some time this week looking at a large double petalled red poppy in […]

Creating a garden is a very personal and individual activity. I have often visited gardens where the person or couple are quite elderly and have wondered what will happen to that garden when they are no longer around. This week I have had the opportunity to see for myself what takes over when a garden, […]

Hurray hurray at last Jack Frost has worked his magic overnight and the garden looks all white and sparkily. We have been spoilt over the last few years by having snow and hard frost before Christmas. This year November and December have been so mild with even a light frost rare. The weeds are growing […]

We have been staying with Grandma for the last week of the summer holidays. One of the joys of visiting her is to see how her garden is growing. It always looks lovely. The garden was professionally landscaped about 12 years ago. This means it has lots of structure and interest. My mum is a […]

The stars of my garden this month have to be the Echinacea. They are so showy and statuesque. I am loving the fact that when they attract bees the bees seem to stay on them for so long. They must really love their nectar. We had a very heavy prolonged shower early in the wee […]

This July has been has hard for the flowers in my garden and I think probably for a lot of gardens in the UK. They were baked and scorched by temperatures of over 30 degrees. Now at the end of the month heavy summer rain is giving them a good battering. My hostas are suffering […]

I am in the process of cutting back foliage. It’s a routine task in my garden. On one side of me my neighbours grow ivy up their fence. The property is rented so the garden isn’t really maintained. I’ve learnt my lesson. You need to get to grips with ivy early on as it is […]

What a treat. A night time walk in an enchanted garden, full of light, shadow, glimpses of majestic trees and other delights. I couldn’t think of anything that could be more charming. After dressing for the Arctic, we were stuck in London Friday night traffic for 50 minutes on our way there and my 7 […]

Major building works to our house over the past year has meant lots of digging. Not so much of the gardening variety, but of the foundation and soakaway type. One unexpected result has been finding some real treasures and snippets of social history in our soil. My son was delighted when this clay pipe was […]

If you watch and read the press coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show you may get the impression that it is all about grand designs, complicated planting scheme and unusual plants. Whilst these are a major focus of the Show and they were great to see and be inspired by when I visited last Wednesday, […]

Cards and a bunch of flowers are traditional gifts for mother’s day. Whilst Sunday lunch and a visit to a garden are some of the typical activities. I am feeling rather pleased with myself as we did just that with my mum, but a week early. The timing was by accident, but it meant that […]

If you hadn’t thought of a wetland as a garden, then please think again. All the elements of natural beauty, native planting, seasonal interest, open space, and water are present in a wetland. For me and for my son the London Wetland Centre is a fantastic garden. We had one of our many visits there […]

The Eden Project Cornwall Thousands of families will currently be thinking about where to go in the autumn half term holiday with their kids. If you live in London, the South East or Scotland there are some great ideas on garden destinations. The winter garden at Hillier’s garden in Hampshire will be looking particularly […]